Conventionally, fenders are used for buffering shock arising in a ship, a quay, or ships when the ship comes alongside a structure such as the quay or the ship comes alongside another ship on the sea.
A fender is classified according to material buffering shock: a rubber fender buffering shock with rubber; a pneumatic fender buffering shock with air; a foam fender buffering shock with foam material; or the like. In addition, the fender is classified according to usage: a fixed fender used with being fixed with bolts to a structure such as a quay; and a floating fender used with being floating on the sea and moored with a chain or the like to a quay or a ship.
Owners of these fenders are various, for example, port-related groups, ship-holding companies, rental companies of fenders and oil companies, and there are many fender manufactures in the world.
Therefore, various types of fenders are intermixed in the same port. In particular, since the floating fenders are easily detached, the floating fenders are resold or borrowed and lent, are carried with being embarked on ships, or are used with being passed around many ships. Therefore, the floating fenders can not stay at a fixed location, but can move in the whole world in many cases.
In addition, since the fenders are expensive, the fenders are used for the long time such as more than ten years, and are used after repair in case of slight damages.
The fenders bear an important part in ships safely coming alongside quays and ships. The ships and quays are damaged if the fenders do not play the part, and hence it can cause serious accidents.
Therefore, for the holding companies and users of the fenders, it is very important to identify each fender and recognize manufacturing items such as a manufacturing date and a manufacturing place, specifications and structure, characteristics such as buffering capability, information regarding history such as repair and used places of each fender in real time, and to manage many fenders so as to use only the normal fenders in any time.
Nevertheless, it has been not easy to manage the fenders in a location where various fenders are intermixed as described above, and in particular, it was further difficult to manage the floating fenders used over the world with being moved.
An object of the present invention is in consideration of the above problems to provide a fender and a fender management system that make it possible to easily manage the fenders installed in being dispersed.